


Gloria Scott, or, Why Alone Protects Me

by songlin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Drugs, Emotional Manipulation, First Kiss, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Unhealthy Relationships, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:18:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it hadn’t been for Victor Trevor, Sherlock might never have (possibilities: survived high school/made it out of uni alive/met John Watson/become a detective/known what happens in a man’s eyes when you bite him on the jaw with enough force to bruise) spent the spring of 2004 (six years before John Watson stormed his life like the beaches of Normandy) sweating out a decade and a half of addiction in a cheap hotel room in Peckham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gloria Scott, or, Why Alone Protects Me

If it hadn’t been for Victor Trevor, Sherlock might never have _(possibilities: survived high school/made it out of uni alive/met John Watson/become a detective/known what happens in a man’s eyes when you bite him on the jaw with enough force to bruise)_ spent the spring of 2004 _(six years before John Watson stormed his life like the beaches of Normandy)_ sweating out a decade and a half of addiction in a cheap hotel room in Peckham.

When Sherlock first met Victor Trevor, they were thirteen years old and had just started high school. They had been assigned a room together due to what the administration felt were complementary attributes. According to the school analyst, Sherlock was clever, precocious, and observant but antisocial and self-oriented. Victor was also terribly clever, but somewhat friendlier, with a kind of charisma to him that could not be denied.

It was that charisma that allowed young Victor to curl up around Sherlock in Sherlock’s bed when they were sixteen, stroke his fingers through his hair and whisper in his ear: “You know, love, I’ve got you right figured.”

Sherlock opened his eyes. They were dark with suspicion, but not so much as they might have been for anyone else, because Victor was clever, and that meant he might be right. “What exactly makes your opinion different from everyone else’s?”

“I’m smarter than everyone else, and I know you. Who else knows you, Sherlock? Not Mycroft. Not your mum. Not the bloody psychologists, that’s for sure.”

Sherlock snickered. After his father left there had been quite a few psychologists. They were great fun until he got bored.

Victor planted a feather kiss into Sherlock’s hair. He hummed contentedly and closed his eyes again. “You’re a sociopath.”

Sherlock jerked away, rolling out of bed. “Fuck you,” he spat, kicking through the jumble of clothes on the floor in search of his shirt.

Victor laughed. “Don’t take it like that, sweet. It’s nothing terrible. You’re quite high-functioning.”

Sherlock paused. High-functioning was good. He could live with high-functioning.

He straightened, hands on his hips, examining Victor critically. “Take me through your steps.”

Victor sat up, curling his limbs together like a cat in the sun. “What are the DSM criteria for sociopathy?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“Yes you do,” Victor said gently. “Remember the Roman room. Go to your mind palace.”

Sherlock shut his eyes. _Psychology: in the library, DSM manual on the end table by the third window from the door._ “A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, as indicated by three or more of the following: failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, deception, impulsiveness, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for safety of self or others, consistent irresponsibility, lack of remorse.” Sherlock opened his eyes, beaming proudly.

Victor gave him an encouraging smile. “Good. Now, my steps.” He held up one finger. “Subject exhibits a _profound_ failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior.” They exchanged a grin. Victor held up another finger. “Considerable talents in the art of deception. The psychologists, your brother, the teachers.” Another finger. “Impulsiveness. When you want something, you take it.”

Sherlock looked slightly put out. “I thought you liked it.”

An indulgent smile. “I do, love, I do.” Finger. “Irritability and aggressiveness. Again, your brother. Stupid people. Yes, I know, they deserve it, but still, facts are facts.” Finger. “Reckless disregard for safety of self or others. The chem lab.”

“That was an _accident!”_

“An accident you calculated had an eighty-seven percent chance of occurring, and you proceeded with your experiment.”

“It was important!”

“Yes, but you still almost killed yourself, you clot.” He took Sherlock’s hand and pulled him closer. “Consistent irresponsibility. We’re supposed to be at French in half an hour, and we’re not going, are we?”

Sherlock grinned. So did Victor.

“Finally, lack of remorse.” He tugged Sherlock back down onto the bed and cozied up into his neck. “You’re not sorry for any of it.”

“Remorse is pointless.”

“So there you have it. My steps. High-functioning sociopath.”

“Hmm,” Sherlock considered. “I can live with that.”

And he did, because Victor was very clever and thought he was fascinating, and Sherlock liked that.

_(delete: almost drowning Mycroft when the pond exploded, breaking his bicycle when you calculated the trajectory of your trebuchet incorrectly, Mummy crying after you told her about Father, the two hours of tears in the garden shed before Mycroft came and got you, delete delete delete)_

Sherlock never did learn the difference between remorselessness and not knowing what to do with what he felt.

_\---_

They didn’t get along from their first day. On the contrary, Sherlock was furious about having to share a room at all, and did not speak to his assigned roommate for the first two weeks of classes. Victor quietly took note of it and left him to his own devices. Sherlock responded to his passivity by practicing his violin increasingly dreadfully and at all hours. Victor continued about his routine as if nothing were wrong.

On the Sunday of the third week at one in the morning, Sherlock was playing the same eight measures of the fourth movement of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill at breakneck speed over and over. Victor rolled over and opened his brilliant hazel eyes.

“I play the piano,” he said. “We should do some Mendelssohn.”

Sherlock, against his better inclinations, lowered his violin and raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve got the key to the music room,” Victor continued. “Mr. Britten likes me. Let’s do it.”

“What, now?” Sherlock said, forgetting himself and cursing inwardly.

Victor threw off the covers. “Yeah.”

They crept downstairs barefoot in their pajamas, clutching armfuls of sheet music. When the key turned easily, Victor punched the air.

“Thought you said Mr. Britten gave it to you?” said Sherlock skeptically.

Victor grinned. “I said he _liked_ me.”

They burned through a Mendelssohn piano trio and a Bach violin concerto, half of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a Shostakovich sonata and a Mahler quartet. By the time they started trying to play Gershwin on nothing but a violin and a piano they were nearly breathless with laughter.

By four in the morning, the violin was resting on the piano bench. Sherlock and Victor were lying on the floor in the instrument closet with their fingers centimeters from each other.

“You wank off?” Victor asked.

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. “Don’t see the point.”

“What?” Victor said disbelievingly. “You’ve never had a stiffy?”

“Of course I have.”

“What do you do with it then?”

“Ignore it. Wait.”

Victor laughed. “You’re missing out, mate.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Sounds dull.”

Victor rolled over onto his side and propped his head up. “You’re not curious? I mean, you’re a smart guy. _Really_ smart.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed.

“Oh, good. I hate the humble ones. Modesty throws off the way you see other people, I think. Makes them look better than they are.”

“Agreed.”

Victor’s fingers closed around Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock regarded him curiously, but not distrustfully. He had been watching Victor and knew he was bright, at least brighter than Mycroft, possibly even brighter than Sherlock in some areas. He accepted that perhaps Victor knew things he didn’t and was willing to allow Victor to teach him.

“Clever boy like you, don’t you want to know everything? Just _devour_ all the information you can get your hands on, stuff yourself with it til you’re fit to burst? Fill your mind til it overflows? You know that feeling, like your head’s too small for everything in it?”

Sherlock nodded, spellbound.

Victor inched closer, planting his hands on both sides of Sherlock’s head and bending over him like some kind of phantom. “I can teach you. Would you like me to?”

Sherlock hesitated.

He nodded.

Victor smiled. “I knew you’d want to try,” he said, and kissed him.

It was a chaste kiss at first, just lips moving gently against each other. But when Victor gently probed Sherlock’s mouth with his tongue, Sherlock let him in. It was clumsy (after all, they were thirteen, and one half of them had never kissed anyone save his mum), but Sherlock found himself riveted. Everything was novel: the press of their lips, the awkward click of teeth, the taste of the inside of someone else’s mouth, the caress of Victor’s fingers on Sherlock’s wrists, Victor’s legs against Sherlock’s.

“Good?” Victor said when they stopped to breathe.

“You bit me,” Sherlock whispered.

Victor grinned. “Did you like it?”

Sherlock nipped his lower lip and nodded.

\---

The second time Victor talked Sherlock into something was two nights later in the broom closet on the second floor. After that, Sherlock stopped counting.

Victor came back for their second year tanned, grinning and toting a staggering amount of very good marijuana, courtesy of his older brother.

“He and his friends are living in this co-op,” he explained as he packed a bowl, “and they’re trying to be totally self-sustained, or as close as possible.”

Sherlock snorted. “Ridiculous.”

“Utterly.” He offered Sherlock the pipe. “Greens?”

He took it, holding it between his first three fingers. “How do you...?”

Victor smiled magnanimously. “Here, I’ll show you. Just put it to your mouth and cover this hole with your finger, and when I light, breathe in. Once it’s burning, let go of the carb, breathe in, cover it again, and hold the smoke as long as you can. Got it?”

Sherlock nodded, eyes narrow and focused. Victor flicked his lighter on.

Sherlock’s first hit was larger than he intended, but he didn’t cough. Victor smiled, impressed.

“Well done.”

Half an hour later, they were flat on the floor. Victor was naked from the waist down and Sherlock had both hands pressed to his head as he squinted at the ceiling.

“My mind is wreaking vengeance on me,” he muttered. “It’s blocking my access to _whole banks of memory._ I don’t like it.”

“This is wild, mate. When I touch myself it’s like everything I feel is turning into colors behind my eyelids.”

“My sense of direction’s off. What _the hell_ is this. Bring back the vodka, we’re never doing this again.”

“You’ve seriously got to try this.” Victor rolled over and pushed Sherlock’s shirt up. “Colors,” he insisted.

Sherlock sighed and gave in. He did not see colors, but it was better than lying on the ground unable to _remember_. And afterwards, he found himself firing through what information he could reach at top speeds, seeing through things in new and brilliant ways, and that part wasn’t bad.

He still refused to ever, _ever_ do weed again.

\---

For the next three years of their education, Sherlock Holmes and Victor Trevor were the joy and pain of Harrow. Their grades and academic performance were the pride of the school. On the other hand, the damage they wreaked upon school property was the source of much complaint, particularly from the parents responsible for paying off said damages. It was with some relief that they sent the boys off to Cambridge immediately following their graduation.

A month after they moved into their dorm room, Sherlock came home from the library to find Victor snorting a line of cocaine off of the glass surface of his desk.

“Christ, Sherlock,” Victor breathed, sitting up and wiping his nose. “You’ve absolutely got to try this. If I feel like I could do anything, you’d be _marvelous.”_

Victor was still a persuasive boy.

Sherlock whiled away twenty minutes lying on his bed, reorganizing the information in his mind palace. He couldn’t believe how little sense some of his categorizations made. It was obvious he needed to build an additional laboratory or office in which to catalog his knowledge of hereditary traits, and delete astrophysics. He briefly toyed with deleting sex, but decided against it.

Sherlock didn’t have the proper language to describe the sensations. He flipped through his memories for suggestions, marveling at the speed at which his neurons fired. _All systems online/gears churning/pistons pumping/engines roaring/pedal to the metal/flooring it/on on on_

Victor decided he’d rather head down to the bars and pick up boys. Sherlock made off with the small bag of the kind only jewelers and drug dealers use, took to the lab, and started experimenting.

In the morning, Victor woke to find his room empty of both the well-hung blonde from the bar and Sherlock. He made his way down to the second-floor lab Sherlock favored and found him surrounded by test tubes of questionable material, furiously typing something into one of the lab computers.

Victor laughed. “You’re not still high?”

“I’ve perfected a seven percent solution that significantly accelerates and clarifies my mental processes but leaves me physically steady.” Anyone else would have tripped over their tongue speaking at the rate Sherlock was. “Lasts up to 45 minutes if I do it right.”

For the first time, Victor noticed the empty syringes littering the work surfaces. “You’ve been _shooting?”_

“Faster. Longer.” Sherlock looked up from the computer, suddenly seized by something. He shifted his attentions from the analysis of tire tracks he was typing up to the faint hum of arousal that had been buzzing through his body for six hours. He stood, grabbed a trash bin, and swept everything on the table into it. A vial shattered. No matter. He was done with all of it.

“Sherlock, what--”

“I need something,” he said shortly, dropped the trash can, seized Victor’s shirtfront and crushed their mouths together.

Well-hung blonde or no, Victor was almost always game for a round with Sherlock. His libido was practically nonexistent, which was just _tragic_ when you considered how very, very beautiful he was. Victor told him so, breathed it against his mouth, and Sherlock positively growled.

“You’re still sore from last night, so you’re going to have to fuck me,” Sherlock said, ripping his shirt open.

“Oh, yes, _good.”_

“Shut up, shut _up,_ this needs to happen _now.”_

It doesn’t end. Not for a long time. Victor tried bending Sherlock over on a desk and fucking him while he snarled for more, faster, harder, _what is wrong with you why can’t you do it right?_ Finally Sherlock got frustrated, hauled Victor up onto the desk and rode him until they came so hard it almost hurt.

After, Sherlock’s hands trembled slightly as he buttoned his shirt back up. Victor helped him get dressed, took him back to their room and tucked him into bed, and for a split second he felt guilty. The feeling was not strong, though, and it passed quickly, to his relief. He left his roommate asleep and went to his classes.

Twelve hours later, Sherlock woke up. “I’m starving,” he announced, fluffing his fingers through his curly hair. “And _fuck,_ my head hurts.”

Victor laughed. “Baby’s first bender. How sweet.”

Sherlock glowered at him and sulked his way to the dining hall.

\---

After that night, Sherlock learned to limit himself. He trained himself to resist the temptation to shoot up again as soon as his thoughts started ticking slower, and how to time himself so his most important work happened at the peak of the high.

It was on one of his longer trips that he first started actively scanning the news for suspicious deaths. He’d done it before; there was the thing with the Powers kid, for instance, when they were still at Harrow. But now it was getting obsessive.

“They’ve tried to get 999 to block my number,” Sherlock ground out one night in their last year at school. He had just returned from the police station, in an absolute rage. “Thankfully that’s illegal.”

“Someday they’re going to arrest you,” Victor told him. “Or stop picking up the phone entirely. _Actually_ block you from 999.”

“Then I’ll show up in person,” Sherlock seethed, throwing himself onto his bed in a fit of pique.

He never had to. A week later, a girl from the floor above them was found strangled to death. Sherlock did not wait for the police gathering alibis to come round to his room. He went straight to the crime scene and demanded to talk to the detective in charge.

He was blocked by a uniform. “This is a crime scene, sir, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to--”

“Look, I can _help_ you, I can tell you what happened, I just need five minutes, that’s all!”

That got attention. A brown-haired man in plainclothes had just been leaving the room. He stopped short. “You what?”

Sherlock grinned. “I can tell you what happened.”

The man shifted his stance. _Feet widely set, hands on hips, head tucked back, brow furrowed._ Sherlock knew a sizing-up when he saw it. In return, he gave the man a once-over, at the same time furiously processing everything he knew about the girl. He spent a moment spent gathering his data and conclusions into sentences.

“I can tell you suspect drugs or sex. Don’t waste your time on the drugs; there was no one in the entire city of London cleaner than Gloria Scott.”

The detective crossed his arms across his chest. “Oh?”

“I also know that the cause of death was exsanguination via the severing of the carotid artery, she was cut only once and with almost surgical precision, and you haven’t found the murder weapon, which you believe is a scalpel or something similar.”

_Oh dear. Too much._ Sherlock winced internally, assessing the detective’s face and estimating how long he has before he’s slapped into cuffs and taken down to the station for questioning.

“Tell me how you know.”

Sherlock was both surprised and elated.

“The same way I know you’re a relatively new sergeant, you’ve just gotten married and you’re very determined to keep your personal life separate from work.”

The detective’s expression was priceless.

Sherlock grinned and launched in.

“When the other officers call you ‘sergeant’ they still stress the word a little too much, as if they’re reminding themselves. As for your marriage, you’re not wearing a ring, but there’s a tan line around where one would be. From the honeymoon, I’d imagine. You touch the finger occasionally, meaning you’re thinking about it. Unlikely you’ve lost it or left it off for more nefarious purposes, it’s too early. So you don’t want to dirty it at a crime scene. Very symbolic, that.

“As for Gloria Scott, she’s a nursing major and volunteers at the needle exchange. Her badge is on the inside of the doorknob. She’s got health problems; I’ve seen her taking medication for them at breakfast. Clotting disorder, I think. So, you know there’s no serious drugs right there; she’s far too health-conscious. You suspect sex because a fifth of all homicides are sexually motivated and a third of all murders of women are committed by intimates. Also, she was stripped to the waist, as evidenced by her roommate’s screaming it for all the world to hear in the hall this morning. As for cause of death, your officers, particularly the younger ones, keep touching their necks. Very telling. Additionally, she had to have been stabbed somewhere she’d bleed out quickly or she would’ve had time to scream. My room is directly below, I’m a very light sleeper and there were no sounds. Hence, neck, carotid artery. The students actually taken to a separate room for questioning have all been biology and medical students, so obviously there’s something particularly precise about her wounds. The continued police presence in these quantities after the body’s been taken away indicates that the murder weapon is still missing. If the murder was committed as surgically as previously established information indicates, it follows naturally that the weapon was a scalpel or another knife particularly well-suited for slicing into flesh.”

Sherlock should have been out of breath. He wasn’t.

The detective was dumbfounded.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, holding out a hand.

The detective took it. “Detective Sergeant Lestrade.”

\---

Sherlock returned to his room grinning like a loon. After much negotiating, Lestrade agreed to fax Sherlock as much of the information on the case as he could get away with. Sherlock glared at the library fax machine until the case file came through and then flew back off to his room, stack of papers in hand.

He was right on all counts. The police appeared to be working on more or less the same information he was. They had no leads besides the medical idea. Gloria had left her door unlocked because her roommate was at her boyfriend’s that night and had lost her key, so the door hadn’t been forced. There were dozens of fingerprints from different boys and the lab was still working on matching them. Lestrade hadn’t sent him anything from the actual interviews, but they weren’t necessary. Sherlock knew all of the medical students in the dorm. He ran through the list in his head. Theresa Bowman, Martha Britt, Neil Conley, Jack Harding, Alden Holt, Isaac Norton, Kirsten Ryan, Cody Shields, and, of course, Victor Trevor. Sherlock flipped through the file again. All of them must have had verified their alibis for the night before, or the police would have taken them down to the station, so--

Sherlock’s eyes drifted over to Victor’s empty bed.

He thought back to that morning, when he’d woken up to Gloria’s roommate’s screams after she found the body. He’d gotten up straightaway, and when he had--

\--Victor hadn’t been there.

_Oh._

\---

When Victor came in that night, Sherlock was lying back on his bed with his hands tucked up under his chin. Victor smiled.

“How was your day?” he said breezily, swinging his bag onto his desk.

“There’s one thing,” said Sherlock, tapping his fingers against his chin, “I don’t quite get.”

“What’s that, love?”

“How’d you get out of here last night?”

Victor stopped. He rolled his head, cracking the tendons in his neck, and sighed. “How long did it take you?”

“I asked my question first.”

Victor sneered.

Sherlock started. Victor was not a sneering kind of boy; that was Sherlock. Victor was all smiles and laughter and endearing fingers on your wrist.

“God, you’re an _ass,_ you know that? Demanding, always wanting things. You’re like a damn child.”

Sherlock was frowning in earnest. “I don’t understand.”

Victor threw up his arms. “I spiked your coke! Ketamine! Just enough to knock you out that extra little bit once you crashed.”

There was a buzzing in the back of Sherlock’s skull. “But--how did you know I’d--”

“Please,” Victor scoffed, dropping down onto Sherlock’s bed with his arms behind him and legs crossed. “You’re high _every night_. You don’t even know how to function sober anymore. It’s ridiculous.”

Sherlock grimaced. “Irrelevant. Why?”

Victor cocked his head and smirked. “Why _what?_ I want to hear you _say_ it, Sherlock.”

“Why did you kill Gloria Scott?”

He smiled. “I didn’t.”

Sherlock sat up and frowned. “Oh. You...I see. But why?”

“First, walk me through.”

“Her heart condition.”

Victor nodded. “Good so far.”

“Clot in her brain. Died without taking another breath at a guess.”

“In my very arms.”

“And you sliced her throat.”

“I did.”

Sherlock leaned forward. “Tell me why.”

Victor smiled. “Here’s the best part. The part only you get to know.” He shucked off his jacket and shoes, tossing them to the floor. “I didn’t kill her.”

“I know, you--”

“You don’t understand. _I_ didn’t kill her.”

Sherlock shut his eyes and leaned back. “Of course. The roommate.”

“The sodding roommate! We’ve got there, hallelujah!”

“The roommate...took her pills? No, swapped them for a procoagulant, I’d imagine. Much faster.”

“Waited til her roommate started complaining of a headache, then left the door wide open for me. Sweet thing.”

“Why?”

“The roommate? Who knows. Bored? I don’t care. She gave me ten thousand dollars to get in there and fuck up the scene so it would look like some psycho slasher rapist. Now they’ll get confused and lack the evidence to convict anybody.” He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, stop. If you tell the police on me I’ll tell them about your coke and then you’ll _never_ get to work with them! So if we can all agree to forget this never happened.” He flopped back onto his bed. “I’m going to sleep. I’m tired.”

Words were difficult. Sticky. “You’re never tired this early.”

“Tired of _you,_ then. Shut _up_ now, please.”

Sherlock shut up. He switched off the light.

\---

In the end, the police received an anonymous tip advising them to check Gloria Scott’s clotting factor and her medication. They arrested her roommate two days later. She was eventually convicted and sentenced to thirty years.

Sherlock dropped out of school a week later. He did not see Victor Trevor again.

He did not kick the coke habit for some years. It took Lestrade’s making Inspector and telling him that he couldn’t ignore the drugs any longer before he gave them up.

It was unpleasant, but not impossible. Sherlock’s sleeping patterns never quiet shifted back into place, but he could work with that. And there was the work. He would have the work forever now.

And then there is John, which is fantastic. John is not like Victor at all. He is not half so smart, but that makes it infinitely more surprising when he does something incredibly clever that Sherlock would never even think of. He is not so persuasive, which is good. Sherlock does not like persuasive anymore. He prefers exasperation, because it means that John cannot tell him what to do and does not really want to.

The first time they kiss, Sherlock is absolutely floored.

It is not just sensations, chemical reactions causing physical arousal and curiosity about what follows. Logically he knows that it’s chemical reactions, but that’s not how it _feels_. He tries to break the different points of contact down, trace the source _(John’s thumbs rubbing at his jaw, Sherlock’s hands around John’s waist, hot breath on his face)_. It’s fruitless. It’s everything.

John seems to sense something’s wrong and stops. They both wince at the loss of touch and Sherlock gasps.

“You okay?” he asks.

Sherlock shuts his eyes. “It’s...a lot.”

“This--this isn’t--have you ever--”

“Yes,” he says, eyes still shut. “But...not like this. It was...distasteful.”

John’s lips go a little tight at the corners, and then he smiles. “And this...isn’t?”

Sherlock smiles. “No.”

“Well. That’s something.”

Sherlock cups the back of John’s head (there is a small intake of breath) and studies him.

“Kiss me again,” he says, curious.

John’s eyebrows quirk up, but he leans up and kisses him again, slowly and methodically.

When they stop, Sherlock is grinning so widely it looks as if his face might split. John laughs.

“God, Sherlock, what’s gotten into you?”

He laughs too. “I got it.”

“Got what?”

Sherlock takes his face in both hands and looks him straight in the eyes. “You. That’s why. It wasn’t you.”


End file.
